Counting
by MirandOnABox
Summary: McCoy and Chapel find a way to benefit from their misfortune, in the form of a bet.


**Authors note:** just letting you know, the paragraphs switch off between points of view. They are all written in third person, but they switch off on inner dialogue, staring with McCoy, then Chapel, then back and forth and back and forth.

--

Leonard McCoy lounged in the less-than-plush chair behind his desk. Feet up on the table, fingers intertwined and locked at the back of his neck, trying to get as much comfort out of his metal surrounding as possible. The Enterprise was on her way to Starbase Alpha 16 for restocking, so all in all it should be a pretty calm journey, however it's never that simple. McCoy finds it amazing that on a ship captained and crewed by the best Starfleet has to offer, he sees about six patients a day for phaser accidents.

You would think that "the best" Starfleet has to offer, would be a little more careful with their weapons.

So after an anticipated twelve hours of easy work, that ended up being twelve hours of annoying, and repetitive work, Leonard McCoy is testy, unhappy, and thanks to his less-than-plush chair, uncomfortable. He closes his eyes, blocking out the fluorescent lights.

Christine Chapel sighs as the door to the sick bay closes for the millionth time that day, separating her from yet another "sick" crew member. She walks over to her desk, catching a glimpse of what _appears_ to be a sleeping McCoy. From the top drawer she picks up a regular pad of paper, and a pen. The top-most paper is covered in tally marks, and Christine adds another. Dropping the pen back into the drawer, she takes the pad of paper over to McCoy.

"You're not asleep, are you?" she asks, flipping her long, blond, ponytail over her shoulder.

"Christine, you know me. Do you really think I could sleep on a hunk of metal like this, no matter how stressful the day has been?" McCoy answers her, not bothering to open his eyes.

"Well I just closed up shop, so let's settle this." She tells him.

Eyelids still shielding his retinas from the harsh colors of the sick bay, McCoy answers her, "There's no way you won."

"Then prove it." She orders him. McCoy figures that considering he is her superior, he should call her on talking to him like that, but Christine is also his friend, so he lets it slide.

Yawning, stretching, and groaning, McCoy pulls himself into a normal sitting position, and starts rummaging through papers on top of his desk.

Christine sways impatiently on the spot, anxious to prove herself correct.

Finally McCoy comes to a yellow piece of paper, buried underneath a crew members medical file. This paper is covered in tally's as well. McCoy gets out a pen from his desk, and adds another.

"Hay you can't just go adding them in like that!" Christine shouts at him.

"Relax, he was here about fifteen minuets ago and I never wrote it down." McCoy eases her.

"Yea sure. I'll let it go Leonard, but just because I'm confident that I have so much more then you that that one little tally mark won't make a difference."

"Twenty-four times today." She states.

McCoy looks at her skeptically, "You bluff." He says to her.

Christine wishes that she _was_ bluffing, "I kid you not, doctor. Today _alone_ I have been approached by twenty-four crew members, _insisting _that they 'turn their head and cough'."

McCoy just stared, he glanced quickly down at his own paper, and slumped his shoulders in defeat.

"How many you got?" Christine asked informally.

"I don't know, but it definitely isn't twenty-four. It's probably closer to thirteen or something, if I can remember correctly." McCoy said, counting instances on his fingers. "The one time Kirk could actually help me out, and he fucked it up anyway."

Christine dropped he pad of paper on McCoy's desk, triumphantly, and walked back to her own desk, sitting in her own less-than-plush chair as if it were a throne.

"You know, if it had been any day but today, I would have won. I swear that Kirk visits me, like, a hundred times in an _hour_ for non-medical purposes." McCoy tells her.

"It just _feels_ like a hundred times an hour." Christine smiles. "So, what, you owe me free drinks at the rec. room for . . . a month is it?"

"Yeah yeah." McCoy says, picking up her tally sheet, and looking it over.

"Oh, and you have to be nice to Spock, too."

"I guarantee nothing."

--

**Authors note: **Okay, so if you couldn't tell, Chapel made a bet with McCoy that she gets harassed by more male crew members a day, then McCoy gets visited by Kirk for non-medical reasons. At the end of the day Chapel won, so McCoy has to buy her drinks for a month . . . and be nice to spock.


End file.
